View full sizeBrent Wojahn/The OregonianPortland Public Schools Superintendent Carole Smith, like other area superintendents, is highly paid among employees of 11 school districts. But the Portland district is an outlier when it comes to how many low-visibility managers, coordinators and others it pays $75,000 to $90,000 a year. Other districts have disproportionately fewer such employees and reserve pay at that level for high-responsibility jobs.

Compared with other local school districts, Portland Public Schools pays an oversize share of employees $75,000 to $95,000 a year for mostly low-visibility jobs.

After years of tight budgets, districts have pared back supervisory jobs and other non-classroom workers to blunt increases in class sizes. Every position, particularly those paid more than a teacher, is scrutinized to make sure it's essential, hiring directors say.

But an analysis by The Oregonian found Portland stands out by retaining a thicker tier of midlevel managers and coordinators, and by awarding most teachers extra pay.

In Portland schools, 10 percent of employees earning more than $30,000 got paid $75,000 to $95,000 last year. Across the area's other largest districts, 6 percent did.

More than a third of the Portland employees were mid-tier coordinators, managers and specialists, including 14 program administrators, 40 instructional coaches, 11 information technology specialists and 40 assistant principals. Nearly half were teachers paid extra to coach sports or work extra hours or duties at their school.

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Find a list of the 11 local school districts' top-paid employees -- including the highest-paid principals and teachers -- at The Oregonian's Your Schools site.

Lu Biado, Hillsboro's assistant superintendent for human resources, said tight budgets have forced school districts like hers to cut way back on instructional coaches, eliminate middle manager positions and ask central office employees to take on more work.

"We have been very deliberate about making sure that administration is the leanest because we believe in teachers in the classroom," she said.

Michelle Riddell, Portland schools' interim executive director for human resources, disputed that Portland is out of line but conceded that she doesn't know how other districts are staffed. "We are constantly trying to do more with less," she said. "I'm a little leery in terms of how we're being compared to others."

Portland has a very senior teaching corps, with half of teachers at the top of the pay scale, earning $63,000 to $72,000 for their 11 or more years of experience and master's degrees, she said. It's natural, therefore, for lots of teachers who take extra work to earn more than $75,000, she said. "If that work is to get done, a teacher will have to take that on," Riddell said.

School districts spend the vast majority of their money on employee pay and benefits, so The Oregonian analyzed how much 11 area school districts paid employees during calendar 2010. The Oregonian found:

Principals, particularly high school principals, are highly paid relative to other employees. In nearly all districts, only a handful of employees earned more than the best-paid high school principal. In Lake Oswego, only the superintendent out-earned the two high school chiefs.

High school athletic directors are among the top earners among employees without administrative licenses. Eleven local ADs topped $90,000 in pay last year, including in Beaverton, Portland, Lake Oswego and David Douglas.

Although they are among the largest employers in their communities, school districts pay very few of their top employees salaries common in the private sector. Only seven employees, six of them superintendents, received more than $150,000 in total pay in 2010.

Surprising finding

The most eye-popping finding was the long list of Portland employees, most with far less visibility and accountability than an elementary school principal, earning $75,000 to $95,000. The group included a custodian, a supply manager, 16 counselors and five school librarians.

Two main factors explain why the state's largest school district has so many employees in that pay range.

First, Portland employs a tier of managers, coordinators, program administrators and specialists that is sparse or nonexistent in the area's other largest districts.

Those districts, which are slightly or much smaller than Portland, leave to principals most of the work of coaching teachers, supervising special ed classrooms and monitoring English-as-a-second-language instruction. Most pay significantly less than Portland does to employees who fill the roles of program coordinators, instructional coaches and counselors, and reserve higher pay for top-responsibility jobs.

The Tigard-Tualatin district, for example, which serves 12,000 students, paid just seven employees $80,000 to $95,000 last year, including the district's No. 2 money manager, its facilities director, its IT director and the Tualatin High athletic director.

Portland has more employees at that pay grade overseeing its special education program alone. To run that program, which serves 6,500 students, Portland employed a director and two assistant directors -- plus 10 lower-tier program administrators earning an average of $94,000. Beaverton's special education program, with 4,700 students, has three administrators: a director and two assistants.

Portland Public Schools' own auditor found in a recent study that staffing levels and costs in special education needed more oversight, and the district axed two of the 10 program administrator positions this year. It also eliminated three midlevel IT jobs and at least two other central office jobs paying about $80,000.

The David Douglas district has a higher percentage of employees making $75,000 and above than Portland, but largely because the teacher pay scale tops out at $75,300. Teachers rack up extras

The second factor is that, under a teacher contract provision largely unchanged since 1983, Portland pays teachers extra for a host of roles and reasons.

That includes automatic extra pay for counselors, librarians and music teachers; coaching stipends for sports team coaches and assistants; stipends for leading co-curricular activities such as choirs, drama productions, student newspapers and band; and extra pay to coordinate testing, gifted education, energy conservation or career education.

The district also pays teachers at their hourly rates, typically about $40 an hour, to put in extra time teaching, planning, working summer school or doing other work as directed by their principals.

Together, that extra pay for extra time or responsibilities increased the paychecks of 2,000 Portland teachers by an average of $3,300 apiece last year. The district had about 2,950 full- and part-time teachers.

All districts pay extra to teachers who step up to coach teams, direct bands and choirs or coordinate testing. The biggest payments, by far, go to teachers who serve as athletic directors, which can net a metro-area teacher $10,000 or more in extra pay to supervise three seasons of night and weekend activities. Beaverton pays its athletic directors as much as $21,000 extra a year.

But Portland pays more stipends than others partly because it has more but smaller middle and high schools than other districts, partly because every counselor and middle or high school librarian gets two weeks of extra pay automatically and partly because Portland rewards more tasks, including elementary music, intramurals, safety patrol and energy conservation.

Portland Public Schools is lean when it comes to very high salaries. It paid just 88 people, or 2 percent of employees earning at least $30,000, more than $100,000 last year, including only four employees earning $130,000 or more. Neighboring Beaverton schools, with about 15 percent fewer students than Portland, paid more employees $100,000-plus last year -- 106 people, or 4 percent.

Both pale when compared with the city of Portland, where 600 workers, or about 7 percent, were paid more than $100,000 last year.

"Look longingly"

Some Portland teachers, by earning pay for extra hours and extra duties, come away with far more than the $72,000 listed as the top of the district's teacher pay scale.

Of 63 metro-area teachers who pulled in more than $85,000 in 2010, nearly half worked in Portland. They included the teacher who coordinated and led training sessions on gifted education; a teacher whose full-time job was running the after-school program at Capitol Hill Elementary; a Wilson High PE teacher who was paid $8,000 extra to help run Saturday morning and lunchtime sessions for struggling students; and five athletic directors.

Gwen Sullivan, president of the Portland Association of Teachers, said many of the teachers who earn extra are extremely dedicated and get great results for students. But she said the school district, not teachers or their union, decided how to deploy teachers and how much extra pay to award.

Many of the biggest chunks have gone to teachers pulled out of the classroom to help coach fellow teachers, she noted. Some have a big impact on teachers' skills and student achievement, she said, and it's important that teachers with recent classroom experience, not administrators, drive curriculum decisions and training.

Still, she said, the district's decision to pay 61 teachers to serve as "achievement coordinators" or "teachers on special assignment" last year surprised her. Twenty-three of them were paid more than $80,000. Beaverton, by contrast, employed eight teachers on special assignment earning an average of $76,000. Hillsboro had two.

"What I know and I hear all the time and I believe as a parent as well is that we need more teachers with students," Sullivan said. "Having more people on the ground, in the schools, is what's helpful to teachers and kids."

Carl Mead, Beaverton's deputy superintendent for teaching and learning, said he and others in Beaverton "sometimes look longingly" at the large number of well-paid positions in the Portland district's special education and information technology departments, and at its large cadre of instructional coaches.

"I can't imagine I would ever need 60-odd people, but more than I have now? Yes," he said. "But I'm not sitting in a position where I can staff anything like that. ... We are trying to keep as many teachers as possible in the classroom." -- Betsy Hammond